The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is delighted to welcome award winning journalist and author Rebecca Clarren for a conversation and evening reception on her latest book The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance.

Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story.

What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been…